Mahmoud Al-Mosawi
The kind of feeling you have toward the Noble Qurʾan will determine the kind of relationship you have with it. Feeling or sensation is an innate aspect that Allah the Exalted deposited in the human being so that he may benefit from it in the way of goodness and righteousness. You are required to eat lawful, wholesome food, and Allah has deposited in you the feeling of hunger, which draws you toward the food that sustains your body; and in addition to that, He has permitted you to make your food excellent and be creative with it, so that it comes out with different and appealing flavors, that you may sense their pleasure as you eat your lawful, wholesome food. So it is with the rest of the basic human needs, such as marriage, housing, clothing, a friend and conversation.
.
Your relationship with the Noble Qurʾan does not fall outside this rule; rather, the rule deepens and becomes clearly manifest in the kind of relationship you have with it. The more important something is to you, the greater the necessity of creating good feeling and positive sensation toward it. The Noble Qurʾan is that which “guides to what is most upright” (Qurʾan 17:9) in all directions of life; it is the rescuer and the foundation in building ideas and courses. Therefore it is necessary that we confront ourselves with complete frankness with this question:
Do I find intimacy with the Noble Qurʾan? And is there an inner attraction and longing that takes me to the Qurʾan, in reciting it and reflecting on its verses?
If we observe the words of the Infallibles in this direction, we find that they display the state of intimacy with the Qurʾan and the state of longing for it with complete clarity. Imam Zayn al-ʿAbidin (a) uses an expression that stirs in us the search and the question about the secret of that beloved and intimate relationship with the Qurʾan; he says: (Were all those between the East and the West to die, I would not feel lonely so long as the Qurʾan is with me). The Imam brings our thinking back to our own reality: how we find intimacy with friends, and how the lover finds intimacy with his beloved. All lovers feel those attracting sensations that make them passionately love to stay close to their beloved, and how a person, if he loses that intimate companion and beloved, is struck by loneliness. Compared with this innate sensation, the Imam’s relationship with the Noble Qurʾan is above all that feeling: he can do without all people if the Qurʾan is with him, for it dispels his loneliness and fills his heart with intimacy.
The words of the Infallibles (a) always point to that psychological dimension that constitutes attraction to and intimacy with the Qurʾan. This is a characteristic truly present in the verses of the Wise Reminder; we do not need to force it, fabricate it or import it from outside the Qurʾan. All we have to do is discover it and open ourselves to it with awareness. As Imam al-Sadiq (a) says of the Qurʾan: (Its wonders cannot be counted and its marvels never wear out)... The wonders follow one another and cannot be counted, and the renewal of time does not change the marvelousness of its marvels. Imam ʿAli (a) says in describing the Qurʾan: (Allah made it a quenching for the thirst of the scholars and a springtime for the hearts of the jurists). We can grasp these meanings through the feelings that come over us in reality: what does quenching mean to the thirsty in a scorching summer? And what does spring, with its freshness and the delight of its flowers, mean to hearts? That beautiful feeling is what ought to form within us toward the Qurʾan...
In order for us to attain intimacy with the Noble Qurʾan, and for our hearts to blossom through its verses and live their perpetual springtime, we ought to look at the verses of the Qurʾan as the verses of life, with all its wondrous details, all its astonishing marvels, all its exciting secrets, and all its fluctuations and changes that blend with our lives. The Noble Qurʾan interprets life for us with all the movement, excitement and renewal it contains, so we should not deal with it in a rigid, lexical manner with no movement in it. Since the Qurʾan is for life, and life holds enough movement, change, surprise and excitement to captivate minds, it also holds enough to create feelings of intimacy that lead to clinging to it and reflecting on its verses in order to grasp its insights. Imam al-Rida (a) affirms this truth in his saying about the Qurʾan: (It is new in every age, and fresh among every people until the Day of Resurrection).
